The Hongkong College of Medicine was founded in 1887. The government of the College is vested in the Court, of which the Rector of the College, who has always been a Government official, is President. The lecturers, who are Government officials or private medical practitioners, each receive a small honorarium, the funds being derived from the fees of the students and a Government grant-in-aid of $2,500. The minimum curriculum of study is five years, and the preliminary examination has been accepted by the General Medical Council of Great Britain. 124 students have been enrolled up to date (March, 1911); and of these 43 have become qualified "licentiates" Most of the licentiates have settled in the Colony, and are exerting a most useful influence in the direction of displacing the native medical methods and popularising Western medical and sanitary knowledge, while a considerable number of them are employed as resident surgeons in the hospitals for Chinese, as medical officers in charge of the Public Dispensaries, and as assistant medical officers on the railway works. The work of the College has thus far been carried on in lecture-rooms and laboratories made available in various hospitals, etc., in different parts of the City. Steps were being taken to provide adequate buildings of its own; but action was suspended when the University Scheme was proposed. When the University is opened, the College will be merged into its Faculty of Medicine.
The City Hall receives an annual grant of $1,200 from Government. It contains a theatre, some large rooms which are used for balls, meetings, concerts, etc., a museum in which are some very fair specimens, and a large reference and lending library, to which new volumes are added from time to time, as funds will allow. The building was erected in 1866-9 by subscription.
Small grants are also given to the Italian Convent ($1,280), the French Convent, (both of which take in and tend abandoned or sick infants), the West Point Orphanage, the Seamen's Hospital, and other charitable institutions.
The Chinese Public Dispensaries are institutions maintained in order to provide the Chinese with the services of doctors, whose certificates will be accepted by the Registrar of Deaths and with the services of interpreters who can assist the inmates of houses where a case of infectious disease has occurred. Coolies are engaged and ambulances and dead vans provided in order to remove cases of infectious disease to the Infectious Diseases Hospital and dead bodies to the Mortuary. The Dispensaries receive sick infants and send them to one or other of the Convents and arrange for the burial of dead infants. Free advice and medicine are given and patients are attended at their houses. There are eight Dispensaries in existence including one for the boat population on a hulk in Causeway Bay.
The total cost of maintenance, which is defrayed by voluntary subscription, was $35,272. The Dispensaries are conducted by committees under the chairmanship of the Registrar General.
VIII-CRIMINAL AND POLICE.
The total of all cases reported to the Police was 9,789 being a decrease of 30 or 0.3 per cent. as compared with 1909.
In the